


Hedonism

by Euregatto



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Backstory of sorts, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Maw has a vague sense of humor, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 13:08:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19746379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: Giving and taking is in their nature.Corvus and Proxima quickly realize how easy it is to tip that delicate balance.





	Hedonism

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to try a new writing style for some practice, while also giving the Order some depth that didn't quite translate to the movies. In all fairness, it would kind of suck for the Avengers if Corvus had remained immortal and if Proxima really did bring a whole fucking sun to a fist fight. 
> 
> Edit: Forgot to mention I take a lot of creative liberties, both with story and character.
> 
> Enjoy!

But danger is as danger does,  
there's a motor in the water and it's coming for us  
I can smell the gasoline, smell the rust  
and I can't move fast enough away.

\- "Heavy Rescue" from Doomtree

* * *

They were together when the mission went to shit: behind the border of the Indigo Badlands in the Messer Cluster, hunting down a stone where there was none to be found, something neither of them would learn until after it was all over. It was just the two of them against the _Swarm_. A full fleet of pirates akin to the Ravagers, ready for the slaughter.

Proxima sent out the distress beacon before they readied themselves for the onslaught. In camaraderie, neither made eye contact; Corvus and Proxima were always ready for death.

But the captain wanted them alive. There was nothing to be done about that.

~

She struggled until the sedatives took hold.

Then they dragged her away, through the carnage of limbs whisked from bodies and heads smashed inwards, and he began to count.

~

Days later, they were taken from their tiny cells and brought before Captain Droch. He was some inhuman thing, reptilian and smug, and there was a terrible stench about him that made Corvus wretch. Proxima managed to nearly bend her wrist restraints but the technology was modified from stolen Galactic Federation cuffs. Unbreaking.

“How blessed we are, men,” Droch exclaimed, “to be in the company of _two_ Children of Thanos! Members of the fearsome _Black Order_! Why, in this quadrant, we call you the _Midnight Slaughter_. But that is this quadrant, and you are terribly far from home.” The pirates howled and stomped their boots. Droch kneeled before Corvus, taking his chin between a clawed forefinger and thumb. “Oh, I’m going to _enjoy_ breaking you.”

“You may try,” Corvus hissed back.

Droch snapped his fingers. The pirates surrounding Corvus wailed on him, stomping down and throwing their heavy melee weapons into his body—but he barely acknowledged the assault. Not a sound, not a whimper. Proxima was restrained. Her head was snapped back, forced to watch as her friend was brutally beaten until black blood seeped into the crevices of the floor.

Corvus held Proxima’s gaze and never looked away.

When it was over, they were separated again, and still, he was silent.

~

A few days later, Proxima was brought to Captain Droch. Corvus was already on the floor, dying, beaten into submission again; she steeled her nerves and said nothing. She wondered if he hated her. She wondered if taking the beatings meant for him would make him hate her more. Either way, Droch was trying to get something out of her.

It wasn’t going to work.

~

The thing was, they treated her unlike a prisoner. They offered food, water, and never once laid a hand on her. Across the way, Corvus was starved, withered, healing so painfully slowly without his glaive near to him that Proxima wondered if he would die. For nearly a month they came to take him in intervals of several days, when he was healed to the point of standing again, and beat him within an inch of his life. She was always made to watch.

Tonight, in the hollowed-out silence of the evening, she threaded her arm through the bars of her cell and tipped the half-cup of rationed water into the divot of the floor. The liquid rolled down the long bend and into his cell, where it pooled into the dent left from a previous prisoner.

“Drink,” she said.

He looked at her wearily.

“Corvus. _Drink_.”

He didn’t.

~

Then, they came for only her. Proxima had expected to be escorted to Captain Droch but instead they steered her somewhere else—a long room with a long table, which they strapped her to and left her there with two pirates. Medics in another life. This was a place of torture, sterilized but reeking of old blood. They asked her the same question she had never answered before.

“Tell us where your Master is.”

She looked at the scalpels, the needles, the tools and the vials of clear liquid, and knew what was coming next. She turned her eyes to the ceiling instead.

“Suit yourself.”

They tightened the restraints on her left arm, and began to cut. Like Corvus, she didn’t make a sound. Or if she had, she didn’t remember after the anesthetic wore off. They flayed her forearm first, flesh from muscle and muscle from bone, allowing the layers to fall open like flower petals in the thin air, and when she still didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, they put her back together, piece by piece. Meticulous. The assembly of a puzzle.

When they returned her to her cell, Proxima collapsed to the floor and laid there for a while, unresponsive. She felt herself slipping away. Corvus was awake across the hall, his ragged breathing the only comfort he could offer.

When they came for her days later, Proxima hadn’t moved at all.

~

Then, Thanos arrived.

Proxima barely responded to the distant cacophony of gunfire and screaming. Her whole body hurt. They had skinned her back and arms and ribs, reassembled her, let her heal. Did it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. That was as far as she could go because she had stopped keeping track somewhere in the middle.

She was slumped on the floor, forgetting what she was thinking about, when a familiar flash of gray blurred passed her vision, and Cull Obsidian was in the cell, having broken the gate open, yelling about something. A moment later he was gone.

Then, Corvus was above her, his glaive clasped in his hand. It had healed him in a matter of minutes, undoing the last two months of constant damage and decaying tissue, knitting it all up perfectly.

Proxima would have her scars for the rest of her life. She could feel it in the acute pain under her skin.

“Midnight,” Corvus uttered. “I am relieved you still live.”

“If they had wished me dead, they would have succeeded.”

He helped her up, her arm around his neck, his other hand grasping her waist, and together they ascended.

~

The Ebony Maw properly patched her up easily enough. The pain would be phantom, at worst, but Proxima was uncertain if physical hinderance was the only thing she would have to worry about. The interior of the ship had become unfamiliar in her absence.

In the infirmary ward, Thanos looked at her pensively. “I should have known that was a trap.”

“I apologize, Father, we failed you.”

“You did not fail me,” Thanos replied coolly. “You were both—”

“Proxima is right,” Corvus interjected. His grasp on his glaive tightened. “Our job was the return with a stone, but here we are, empty-handed, set back _months_.”

Little Gamora was in the corner, picking dried blood from under her nails with a knife. Nebula whispered something into her ear. Neither of them had said anything since their Outriders decimated the _Swarm_ fleet.

Thanos turned his back to Corvus and said, “When you have recovered, we will try again.”

The Maw transmitted a single thought to Corvus’ mind:

_And this time, we will ensure our sources are less conniving._

~

Afterwards, Proxima didn’t sleep. She wandered the long corridors of _Sanctuary_ without purpose, striding up and down as if bored, unable to focus on any particular task. On the fifth consecutive night without proper rest she settled for retrieving a bottle of Arr’van Brew from the subcellar in the belly of the ship, where she found Corvus seated in the shadows on a crate, already half-through a bottle of his own.

Corvus didn’t drink.

“Sleep evades us both, then?” he asked, gesturing the ale in her direction.

“There are no other compulsions for my alertness at such an ungodly hour.”

He shrugged and offered the bottle again. This time she took it and choked back a swig. “The Maw wanted to know what transpired,” he told her. “I was unable to find a place to start, so I refrained from recounting the tale.”

“Best to forget. We have no need to keep dwelling on it.”

“You say that,” he replied thinly, “but I suspect you feel otherwise.”

She sounded bitter and cold and tired. “You don’t know _shit_ about how I feel.”

They hadn’t talked in days. It had become so difficult to be around him, seeing his eyes and hearing his voice, and it was so _hard_ not to reflect on what happened. Corvus slid off the crate and advanced on her, casting her in his swarthy shadow.

“For our master’s sake,” he said, looking through her, “we must cope. I am willing to do what I can…if it helps.”

She took another drink. “Like what?”

“Anything.” He glimpsed her once over. His intent was something else, the indescribable knowledge of want and wonder. “Do you have a preferred method of stress relief?”

Proxima thought about it. She drank. She gave him the ale.

“Just one.”

Coruvs tipped his head back and downed the rest of the bottle.

~

His bed felt impossibly cold. They didn’t touch for a long while; she sat at the edge of it, her hands in her lap, and he kneeled before her, anticipating her next words.

“Just once,” she said finally. “Only between us. Not even Cull is to know.”

He crossed his heart and rose to kiss her.

~

He was bigger than she had anticipated but she was adamant and indignant and took him in full, uprooting the bedsheets with her nails as he slid in, the burn of him running through her deep as if he might never end. When he was buried to his hilt, she was already panting, exerted by the effort of her determination, and he slowly drew back out.

“Has it been a while?”

She nodded against his shoulder.

His first thrust was hard. She cried out, rolled her head back into the pillow. It smelled like him. “That’s it,” he said. He thrusted again, testing her reaction. She arched her hips up off the bed, taking him deeper, wailing into the dark. “Yes, that’s it—you feel great.” He set a pace, long and slow and hard, and got her legs around his waist. “Stars above, were you made for me?”

_“Corvus—”_

“I’m here,” he said. “Right here.”

Her eyes snapped open to meet his, and she looked at him as he fucked her. His thrusts came faster, jolting her body against the bed. Red blossomed under the surface of his gray cheeks. It was a nice change of pace to see him this alive.

_“Oh—”_

She was moaning so _very_ vocally beneath him, in opposition of who she was outside the bedchambers. They were both different people in the privacy of the dark, begging for each other, a collision of skin and teeth.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her. “You’re so beautiful, Midnight.”

She knitted her fingers behind his neck and pulled him close, sucking at his throat, feeling his pulse in her lips. _“Corvus,”_ she uttered against him. It was impossible to describe being with someone who treated her like both glass and steel.

“Tell me what you want,” he said. “You can have it.”

“Let me come.”

He growled low, a simmering sound in his chest. Her muscles clenched, tightened, and he grabbed her hip and slammed into her with everything he was, forcing her close, and his other hand skated between the apex of her legs and over her clit. He made gentle circles with his thumb.

She let go.

And they fell apart.

~

For a while afterwards they stared up at the ceiling, covered thickly in sweat. All her scars were visible to him and he kissed each one attentively. “Everything that happened,” he said against her skin, “to you, to me—none of it is in here. You are welcome where it is safe.”

“Then,” she said to him, “will you be here when I awaken?”

He crossed his heart and put his hand to her cheek.

She sighed into his touch. For the first time since she could last remember, Proxima slept through the night.

~

That should have been the last of it, but it wasn’t. Corvus knew that going into it, even after he swore himself to the singularity of the event, and the secrecy. It wasn’t long—or perhaps, time no longer felt long to him after his stint in captivity—before she cornered him in the hull of the ship, where he knew she would be, but without rhyme or reason.

“Corvus.”

He knew what she wanted. “You said only once.”

“I…I know.” She looked tired, as always lately. Her joints ached from her last mission with Nebula and Cull in some shoddy desert outpost, imposing Thanos’ grandeur upon the residing population. She smelled like dry heat. “What if I asked you to undo your vow. Would you make the exception for me?”

His hand touched her cheek. He leaned in and kissed her.

He told her, “Only for you.”

~

There wasn’t room for discussion on how or where, so they settled for right there in the hull, and he bent her over a crate and took her roughly. She moaned beneath him, pushing back against his hips when he thrusted forward, right into her, wanting to give and take as was the nature of things around here.

He leaned in and kissed the scar on her shoulder from when the _Swarm_ had skinned her back. “You feel incredible,” he said.

“You talk a lot,” she replied, “for an assassin.”

“Shall I stop?”

“Actually.” She faltered, grinding desperately as he picked up his pace. From the growing heat in her belly she could feel her orgasm approaching. She was shaking. “No, I—I like it.”

One hand was on her hip, the other trailed inquisitive fingertips long her spine. She curled her fingers around the edge of the crate and _moaned_. He kissed the shell of her ear. “Evidently, you like it quite a bit.”

“It means you’re— _oh_ —still here.” Then, “Corvus, I’m—”

Close. He felt her desperation. She tightened, got louder.

“Come,” he said thickly. “Come for me.”

And oh, _oh_ she did.

~

She suspected something had changed. Then again, nothing had been the same since the _Swarm_ took that little piece that made her whole. Not skin or blood or bone, but the very corner of her mind, which replayed the memories over and over, and left her hollowed out and hungry to be filled.

Corvus gave and gave and gave, and she would take and take and take.

~

“That looked like fun,” Cull said thinly. He had seen them gnawing each other’s faces behind the coolant apparatus in the west engine room, though his lack of surprise indicated that his suspicions from the last few months. “You must be more careful, Brother. She’s a formidable woman, but we cannot afford distractions. You said so yourself.”

“I’m very aware of what I’ve said.” There was a cup of tea clutched in Corvus’ hands. He splayed his fingers, drinking in the heat of it, and looked at his younger brother from across the table. “Do not tell the Maw. I will never hear the end of it.”

Cull scoffed. “I would _never_. Though, he has a way of slipping between the cracks of the mind. What he learns is often not through verbal disclosure.”

Corvus shrugged his shoulder. A bracket of sunlight fell across his face and slowly warmed him up.

~

They had never agreed to it, but he always let her come to him. Through the first few months it was for sex, to let out steam; they ran missions and returned to Titan and wherever she found him was where they stripped and went at it. Proxima realized quickly that he was often positioned in quiet, secluded areas, because their intentions would perhaps be too obvious if she was seen prowling the corridor to his bedchambers on frequent occasions.

Then, as she had suspected, something changed.

It was her fault.

She wasn’t thinking clearly at all, after it happened—after waking with a start to a room that was too dark, too empty, too much like her cell, and she had relived the cold floor, the damp air, the dangerous heat of her blood outside her body. She was already at his door, her knocks more desperate than she would ever admit, and he answered barely a moment later.

“Midnight—”

She pushed him in, mouth grinding against his, wanting to take and take and take. They collapsed on his bed, wordless, breathless. His sheets were warm and slept in. The gray linens bunched up and tangled up between them in the sprawl.

She was taking, hands on his bare chest, memorizing his structure. She was taking, legs around his waist, making him hard beneath her. She was—

“Proxima,” he said with the same suddenness as a bullet.

She dropped her head into her hands and her shoulders shook and she choked on a sob, falling apart right in front of him like she never had before with anyone, and felt his arms around her back.

“Ssh,” he ushered. “Come, lie with me.”

She weakly went with him, as he guided her against his chest and pulled the sheets over them. He let her put her head against the crook of his shoulder, and his hand laid out over her side, offering the comfort of his presence, so warm against her frigid body.

He said, “You’re safe here.”

She believed him.

~

When she woke later, she found he was still fast asleep, holding her steadfastly to his chest.

She mistakenly thought to herself, _I can get used to this._

~

And she told him that much, when they were both awake and rolling in the sheets. “Great sex?” he assumed, running his tongue over her areola, making her arch her back and groan her approval. He sucked marks along the soft skin of her breasts. Little bruises she could touch later and think of him.

“Forgetting,” she said honestly. “Being here. Waking beside you.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and tossed them over so she was above him. “And, yes—great sex. Do you—?”

“Feel the same?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, propping himself up on both elbows to get a better look at her.

“It’s not always about what I want.”

He didn’t realize what he had said until it was already out. “Isn’t it?”

Proxima’s expression didn’t change, but her demeanor did. She felt his erection flagging against the inside of her thigh, reached between her legs and guided him in. “Fine,” she said, “then let me have this.”

“I apologize, I didn’t mean—”

“Stop talking.”

He exhaled, laid back, put his hands on her hips. His thumb fell across the fluttering pulse under her skin and committed its rhythm to memory as he set his pace and let her take from him. She arched, moaned as if trying to restrain herself, and he obediently touched her where he knew she wanted most, though the lack of words between them made it difficult to know if she was enjoying it.

When she came, he didn’t.

“Did you finish?” she asked coolly, panting from her efforts.

“No. I’m content as long as you are.” He saw her expression hadn’t changed, still horrible and hollow even after the orgasm, and he asked, “Did you want me to?”

“I wanted you to die so they’d stop taking me apart.”

The silence was too thick, too heavy.

His glaive was leaned against the far wall. Sunlight lanced through the still air and bounced off the polearm, giving it the forbidden, ethereal quality of gold. “You should go,” he said quietly. “I believe we let this get too far.”

She must have agreed with him, because she got off and got dressed, and left without a word.

~

The Maw knew, as he knew many things, and even if he didn’t, he always found a way to learn. “I assumed Cull was merely conjuring stories in his head,” he said to her, “but you and Corvus have been avoiding each other for days. Rifts are caused only by emotional compromise.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Proxima replied. Warned.

“I would like to. Was it the horrors of your captivity that have made you so raw?”

She gazed down from the platform and saw Gamora and Nebula sparring in the dirt. The latter sister looked like a new feature had been implemented into the side of her face. Corvus was there on his own time, instructing their movements, slapping their legs into proper position if they waivered with the flat of his blade, and not once did he look in Proxima’s direction. That meant he knew she was watching.

“I said something I regret,” she admitted.

The Maw shrugged. “As we do.”

“I blamed him for what was done to me.” She projected into the Maw’s mind the moment she tipped her rationed water into the divot on the floor, and how Corvus looked at her when he didn’t drink it. She let him see perhaps too much. It made her feel vulnerable and exposed. “It had never occurred to me that he blamed himself so much already.”

The Maw attempted to shift through her mind but she quickly barricaded his access. He put his hands up. “Apologies. My curiosity always gets the better of me.” Then, having deemed she wasn’t going to punch him, said, “Well, I suppose it would be formal of me to encourage your reconciliation. Set it aside, or—how have you been handling it so far?”

“We’ve been fucking, Maw.”

He scowled. “Pleasant. Please refrain from teaching the girls your vulgarities, Master Thanos already expresses enough disappointment in us as it is.”

“At this point,” she said, “it is merely a competition.”

“Oh, is it? Why didn’t you tell me? Now I will never win.”

He was joking, a rare but pleasant thing, and grinned at her. Proxima allowed a smile to reach her lips.

It became a little easier to breathe.

~

Thanos must have known something was off, because he suddenly wanted supplies Proxima could have sworn they had plenty of in the last upkeep log, and even though he had never done it before, Corvus was sent with her into the seclusion of space to retrieve what was required. Perhaps he was tired of the awkward atmosphere and wanted them to sort it out. Still, they behaved as if the friction wasn’t as apparent as everyone else found it. She had heard Maw tell Cull before departure, “Make peace with your brother, I suspect he won't return.”

Then, the situation felt much too familiar, and she ditched the pilot’s stoop to sit on the edge of the ladder, hands shaking.

Corvus remained up front for a while. He set the shuttle to autopilot and rose slowly, going to her, gesturing out with his hand and saying nothing. She turned her head away from him. He gestured more firmly, and said, “Come.”

She took his hand. He lifted her up and led her back to the bunk in the rear of the ship, where she perched at the edge of the lower bed and he kneeled at her legs. The reoccurrence of time rushed over her.

She took his face in her hands. She ran her thumb over his cheek. “I do not blame you for what they did to me. It was a moment of anger, and it will not happen again.”

“It is my doing,” he said. “I did not think, and upset you. I meant only that you could—” He stilled his hands against her thighs. “You can have anything you want from me, whenever you want it, and for as long as you want it. It is what I want. If you want that too, I would be honored.”

“What if I asked for everything, always?”

“Have I said something that indicates my hesitation?”

Proxima pulled him down with her.

~

They made love for the first time, slow and deliberate, blurred together and reformed in their closeness, their nearness, their unending heartbeats. He told her everything she wanted to hear, and she said his name and clawed up his back and came for him until he finally let go, of himself and everything that had ruined them before now.

Afterwards, they laid side-by-side, and Proxima asked him, “Are you mine?”

“As you are mine, yes. Until the end of our days, or if you decide otherwise.”

She said, “Promise me.”

He crossed his heart.

She did the same.


End file.
